Salt Sea Hare (Mixed Media Exhibition)

Salt Sea Hare, alludes to the 2014 Storm Surges along England's East Coast. During these events the little known population of Brown Hares of Havergate Island, Suffolk was decimated. Before 2014 the RSPB’s hare counts usually recorded a minimum of 30 individuals, however following the floods only 15 were recorded. Worst still between 2015 and 2020, the numbers of hares being sighted reduced to just 5, bringing into question the likelihood of the populations recovery. Taking this event as its starting point, Salt Sea Hare, mourns the loss of individual hares that lost their lives during this time, but it also expresses a despair regarding the larger themes of climate change and species loss. Hares are often depicted, ‘boxing’ or running, emphasising their symbolic value to humans as ‘signs' of fertility and virility. Salt Sea Hare departs from typical hare motifs and favours a more subdued and intimate portrait of individual vulnerability. Each individual hare is observed for an 'uncut' ten minute period of rest, sleeping, or preening. The encounter, is accompanied by the steady sound of 'rain' and marked by the eventual dissolution of the salt block upon which each hare is projected. As each ten minute loop resets, virtual ‘cyclical’ time contrasts with linear, material time to call into attention entropy and the inevitable dissolution of life, regardless of ‘virtual memories’ that soften the reality of species loss. It is the hope of the artist, that by offering the viewer the unusual opportunity to observe hares in this way, a more immediate and intimate sense of animal death and species loss will be felt.

Victoria Matthews